Holocaust memorial vandalized in Ukraine
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) – A Jewish group says a Holocaust memorial has been vandalized in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.
Oleksandr Nazar of the city’s Sholem Aleichem Jewish Culture Center said Friday that unknown assailants on Wednesday smeared red and blue paint over the memorial in central Lviv.
He said the vandals also wrote a statement on the memorial which “humiliates both Jews and Ukrainians.”
Nazar said Friday that activists have cleaned off most of the paint and that Lviv police have launched an investigation.
Lviv, a vibrant center of Jewish life before the Holocaust, is now home to a few thousand Jews, according to Nazar. Some 1.4 million of Soviet Ukraine’s 2.4 million Jews were executed, starved to death or died of disease during World War II.
Jewish groups complain that anti-Semitism persists in Ukraine.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
